Tiny Ontario, Canada, Charity
Builds 17 Nicaraguan Schools
Thousands of Nicaraguan children have been
given a chance to go to school thanks to
their growing relationship with a small
eastern Ontario community.
By building schools like this one and
providing pencils and notebooks, SchoolBox
has allowed thousands of children to go to
school. Normally, half the local children
don't finish Grade 5. (Submitted by Matthew
Bassett)
Since 2006, the people of Almonte, Ontario,
about 50 kilometres west of Ottawa, have
built 17 schools in Nicaragua through a
local non-profit group called SchoolBox.
The most recent school was constructed in
the Nicaraguan city of Leone this month by a
group of Almonte teenagers — some of the
hundreds of people who have journeyed from
their town of 5,000 to spend their holidays
digging trenches and piling rocks alongside
local workers in sauna-like heat.
Nathan Rosevear, 16, stabbed his shovel into
a slowly deepening ditch, sweating as he
swung small clods of dirt away. Rebar was to
be planted in the completed trench to
reinforce the cinder block walls of the new
school, which is slated to welcome its first
students in September.
Rosevear said he's talked to a lot of the
local kids about what they want to be when
they grow up. They hope to become doctors or
police officers — "stuff that you need a lot
of training for," he said. "Building a
school, education for these kids is really
important."
Less than $2 a day
But education is not easy to access in the
second-poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere, after Haiti. Three-quarters of
the population lives on less than $2 a day,
said SchoolBox founder Tom Affleck.
In the impoverished neighbourhood where the
school was being built, sewage and garbage
trickle through the streets between homes
made of tin and plastic, and half the local
children don't finish Grade 5.
Melvin Holancio, the son of a single mother
with 10 children, dropped out of school in
Grade 5 to work at a corner store.
"I didn't have the money to pay for a school
uniform or to buy a school bag or
notebooks," he told CBC News in Spanish.
"And I just wasn't able to keep going to
school without these materials."
This year at age 14, he managed to return to
school with the help of SchoolBox, which has
provided him with books, a new backpack and
even shoes to wear to school. He hopes to
become a civil engineer, he said, and build
more schools for SchoolBox.
Over the past few years, SchoolBox has
bought school supplies, paid teachers'
salaries, and even started sports and dental
hygiene programs with hundreds of thousands
of dollars in donations from the people of
Almonte, said Affleck.
Affleck, 32, started SchoolBox four years
ago after spending some time living at a
coffee farm in northern Nicaragua. While
there, he happened to give a notebook and a
pencil to a little girl. At that point, her
father came around the corner of their
shack, which was made of boards and plastic.
"His face just lit up," Affleck recalled.
"He looked at her and he looked at me. And
he just said, 'Now you've got this notebook,
you can go to school this year.'"
Affleck said that's when he realized how
little was stopping the local children from
getting an education.
"And imagine what we could do if we started
giving notebooks and pencils to a lot of
kids!"
Affleck went back home to Almonte and
started raising money.
He convinced his friends and family to go to
Nicaragua, and they came back full of
excitement and enthusiasm that spread
through the community.
"We had kids who were giving their
allowances, elderly people on fixed incomes
sharing it with the children down here," he
said. He can't imagine having started
Schoolbox without the people of Almonte, he
added. "Because they're the ones who've
carried it."
Rosevear and about a dozen other members of
his youth group at St. Paul's Church in
Almonte spent a full year holding car washes
and bake sales and cutting grass to raise
money. They collected a little more than
$40,000 to pay for their trip to Nicaragua.
"It's been really fun, actually," said Andy
Bassett, who was heaving large rocks into a
wheelbarrow while most of his friends were
at home or in Florida "just kinda lazin'
around" during their winter break.
He was glad to be in Nicaragua doing hard
labour instead, he said, and feels it's not
just the Nicaraguan schoolchildren who have
benefited. "We're here, and we're building a
school. It feels like we're actually doing
something, and we're actually …getting
something out of March Break." |
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